Take Me Back: Validating the Wayback Machine

Abstract

Although fields such as e-commerce, information systems, and computer-mediated communication (CMC) acknowledge the importance of validity, validating research tools or measures in these domains seems the exception rather than the rule. This article extends the concept of validation to one of an emerging genre of web-based tools that provide new measures, the Wayback Machine (WM). Drawing in part on social science tests of validity, the study progresses from testing for and demonstrating the weakest form of validity, face validity, to the more demanding tests for content, predictive, and convergent validity. Finally, the study tests and shows nomological validity, using the diffusion of innovations theory. In line with prior diffusion research, the results of tests for predictive and nomological validity showed significant relationships with organizational characteristics and two WM measures: website age and number of updates. The results help validate these measures and demonstrate the utility of the WM for studying evolving website use.

Collective Approach to Complex Food System Issues, the Case of The Ohio State University

“…Nested Boolean searches included "urban university and food systems" and "university food system teaching, research, engagement, or stewardship." The researcher used the internet archive, the Wayback Machine to investigate historical website content (Hackett & Parmanto, 2005;Murphy, Hashim, & O'Connor;Thelwall & Wilkinson, 2003). Documents were evaluated and organized based on contributions in one or more components of teaching and learning; research and innovation; outreach and engagement; and resource stewardship.…”

Doing Web history with the Internet Archive: screencast documentaries

“…Are the archived ones "valid"? Such a determination relies, among other things, on whether the date stamps of archived web pages, including new archived versions, match the dates of the web pages when online, an issue studied by a series of authors (Dougherty & Meyer, 2014;Dougherty et al, 2010;Murphy, Hashim, & O'Connor, 2007). In the event, the Internet Archive has met validation challenges concerning web page (and thus content) age.…”

Web 25: histories from the first 25 years of the World Wide Web

“…Murphy, Hashim & O'Connor (2008) validated the Internet Wayback Machine as a "viable research tool" (p. 71), highlighting though that the Wayback Machine has limitations. It archives publicly accessible sites written in simple HTML, but has problems archiving password-protected or dynamic websites (Veronin, 2002).…”